Prisoner Charles DOWNES 1872-1875

Prisoner Charles DOWNES, photograph by T. J. NEVIN, 1870s
Original prints and cdvs of 1870s Tasmanian mugshots in QVMAG, NLA & AOT COLLECTIONS

ORIGINAL PRINT FROM GLASS NEGATIVE (QVMAG)
This print was produced by government contractor Thomas J. Nevin from his glass negative taken in the one sitting with Charles Downes ca. 1872 at the Hobart Gaol. Scratches, cracks and grime are visible on this print from handling of the negative when reprints were made for prison and court records between 1872 and 1875.

Prisoner Charles Downes
Original print by T.J. Nevin 1872-1875
Displayed on one of three panels for exhibition and sale by Beattie & Searle, 1916
Downes' print is second row, second from right.

Forty prints of 1870s Tasmania prisoners in three panels
Original prints of negatives by T. J. Nevin 1870s
Displayed by J. W. Beattie for sale, catalogued in 1916
QVMAG Collection: Ref : 1983_p_0163-0176

CDV in OVAL MOUNT (QVMAG)
In 1985 at the QVMAG, for reasons best known to them alone, these forty sepia prints were reprinted as black and white copies with scratches and grime removed (fogged out).

Prisoner Charles Downes, mugshot printed as a black and white copy made in 1985 from T. J. Nevin's original uncut sepia print. QVMAG ref: 1985_p_0161downes1

Black and white reprint of Nevin's negative cleaned of cracks etc created at the QVMAG in the 1980s and printed as a cdv in an oval mount. (QVMAG ref: 1985:P:92). The sepia cdv's in oval mounts held at both the QVMAG and the NLA are the original 1870s prints used by the 19th century prison administration.

CDV in OVAL MOUNT (NLA )

NLA Catalogue online 2005
Title Charles Dawnes [sic] per Rodney 2, taken at Port Arthur, 1874 [picture]
Creator: Nevin, Thomas
Ref: PIC P1029/6 LOC Album 935
NB: Incorrect information on the NLA notes; surname was DOWNES

Charles Downes was photographed by T. J. Nevin between incarceration at the Hobart Gaol in 1872 and reprieve from a death sentence in May 1875. See this article: Carnal Knowledge of Children: convictions 1860s-1880s

ARCHIVES OFFICE of TASMANIA copy
A copy of the QVMAG mounted cdv print is held at the Archives Office of Tasmania, bearing the same number, 44 on front. The QVMAG copy was numbered 44 because it was one of about seventy (70) cdvs of prisoners photographed by Nevin which were removed from the Launceston collection in 1983 for exhibition at the Port Arthur Heritage Site south of Hobart. The National Library of Australia's copy has no number on recto: it was donated in the 1960s from government estrays by Dr Neil Gunson:

NEWSPAPER REPORT

LAW INTELLIGENCE. (1872, February 16). The Mercury (Hobart, Tas. : 1860 - 1954), p. 2.
http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article8916981

TRANSCRIPT

Charles Downes was found guilty on a charge of feloniously assaulting Dorothy Smith, aged 9 years, in Stacey’s revolving circus in the Queen’s Domain, and remanded for sentence.

POLICE RECORDS

Source: Tasmania Reports of Crime for Police, James Barnard, Gov't printer

Charles Downes' death sentence recorded in the Supreme Court Hobart on 13th February, 1872, was remitted to life imprisonment in May 1875.

RELATED POSTS main weblog

Australia's FIRST MUGSHOTS

PLEASE NOTE: Below each image held at the National Library of Australia is their catalogue batch edit which gives the false impression that all these "convict portraits" were taken solely because these men were transported convicts per se (i.e before cessation in 1853), and that they might have been photographed as a one-off amateur portfolio by a prison official at the Port Arthur prison in 1874, which they were not. Any reference to the Port Arthur prison official A. H. Boyd on the NLA catalogue records is an error, a PARASITIC ATTRIBUTION with no basis in fact. The men in these images were photographed in the 1870s-1880s because they were repeatedly sentenced as habitual offenders whose mugshots were taken on arrest, trial, arraignment, incarceration and/or discharge by government contractor, police and prisons photographer T. J. Nevin at the Supreme Court and adjoining Hobart Gaol with his brother Constable John Nevin, and at the Municipal Police Office, Hobart Town Hall when appearing at The Mayor's Court. The Nevin brothers produced over a thousand originals and duplicates of Tasmanian prisoners, the bulk now lost or destroyed. The three hundred extant mugshots were the random estrays salvaged - and reproduced in many instances- for sale at Beattie's local convictaria museum in Hobart and at interstate exhibitions associated with the fake convict ship Success in the early 1900s. The mugshots were selected on the basis of the prisoner's notoriety from the Supreme Court trial registers (Rough Calendar), the Habitual Criminals Registers (Gaol Photo Books), warrant forms, and police gazettes records of the 1870s-1880s. The earliest taken on government contract by T. J. Nevin date from 1872. The police records sourced here are from the weekly police gazettes which were called (until 1884) Tasmania Reports of Crime Information for Police 1871-1885. J. Barnard, Gov't Printer.

NOTICES

BIOGRAPHY: Professional photographer Thomas James Nevin snr (1842-1923) produced large numbers of stereographs and cartes-de-visite within his commercial practice, and prisoner identification photographs on government contract. His career spanned nearly three decades, from the early 1860s to the late 1880s. He was one of the first photographers to work with the police in Australia, along with Charles Nettleton (Victoria) and Frazer Crawford (South Australia). His Tasmanian prisoner mugshots are among the earliest to survive in public collections, viz. the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston; the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart; the Tasmanian Heritage and Archives Office, Hobart; the Port Arthur Historic Site, Tasman Peninsula; the National Library of Australia, Canberra; and the Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW, Sydney. Thomas J. Nevin's stereographs and portraits are held in public and private collections in Australia, New Zealand, the USA, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Denmark, France and Switzerland.

Click here for KEY DATES 1842-1923

Try thumbnail SEARCHING here

THE MUGSHOTS:Thomas Nevin's extant prisoner identification prints and cartes-de-visite in oval mounts - "mugshots" - were taken between 1871 and 1888. The public collections consists of 350+ estrays from more than 2000 photographs taken of prisoners in Tasmania by Thomas Nevin and his brother Constable John Nevin. The National Library of Australia currently holds 87 photographs, the State Library of NSW holds 13 photographs, the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery holds 112 photographs, the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery holds more than 50, and the Archives Office of Tasmania holds 10 originals and 100 or so paper copies of the QVMAG collections. A dozen or so are held in Private Collections.

DISCLAIMER: We have not voluntarily contributed to any publication which supports the misattribution of Nevin’s prisoner/convict photographs (300+ extant) to the non-photographer A.H. Boyd, nor do we condone any attempts by public institutions or private individuals to co-opt the work on these Nevin weblogs to apply the misattribution.

INDIGENOUS NOTICE: lutruwita/Tasmania/Van Diemen's Land (loo-tru-wee-ta) always was, always will be Aboriginal land.

This weblog pays respect to the ancestors and elders past, present, and emerging of the first Australian peoples and acknowledges their continued connection to land, sea and culture as the traditional custodians of this country.

Irish-born Thomas J. Nevin would have been keenly aware that the residence and photographic studio he occupied at No's 138-140 Elizabeth St. Hobart in the 1870s was built on the traditional lands, nipaluna/Hobart, of the palawa people. It is no small irony that today, the very same property, which is renumbered as No. 198 Elizabeth St. Hobart and is occupied by the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre, has returned to its traditional owners.

Looking east from the corner of Patrick St., the Royal Standard Hotel, 142 Elizabeth St. then T. J. Nevin’s studio and residence, 140-138 Elizabeth St. Hobart, 1870s

We also acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora nation as the traditional custodians of the City of Sydney, and the Ngunawal people of the Australian Capital Territory on whose lands this site is maintained.

Please note: images on this weblog represent deceased people, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Viewing such images may cause sadness and distress.

Pages

Prisoner Charles DOWNES 1872-1875

Australia's FIRST MUGSHOTS

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

From the KLW NFC Group

FEATURED POST

Hobart Gaol camera and mugshot books 1891-1901

Translate

SEARCH

Amy BOCK

COMPANION SITES